show songs

Today’s song is A Pharaoh Story from the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. First performed as a 15-minute cantata in 1968, Joseph was reworked into a longer show and became a full-length stage production in 1970, making it to the West End by 1973. It has seen many revivals and there is talk of a film version of the show, following the success of other film versions of musicals such as Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera.

The reason I’m playing this song today is that over the past few weeks I’ve seen many reports of a fantastic version of Joseph being produced by Centerstage, a local organisation who do fantastic work with performers young and not-so-young. It sounds like their very special productions of Joseph have been a huge success following their summer schools this year. Congratulations to Fiona and the team!

Given the time of the year, I’ve decided to make today’s and tomorrow’s song from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Since I played a number of songs from this show in 2010 including Could We Start Again, Please?, I Don’t Know How to Love Him and the wonderful I Only Want to Say, I’m a bit more limited in what I can play. Today it’s the understated song Pilate’s Dream in which Pontius Pilate foresees the impending events of the Crucifixion.

Today I’ve decided to play the instrumental from the second act of the 1984 musical Chess by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvæus and Tim Rice. The themes are reused in the Endgame of the original concept album and in other songs in the subsequent stage versions of the show. I think the melody of the last section is beautiful – the part which uses the following lyrics in Endgame:

Is there no-one in my life
who will not claim
the right to steal
my work, my name,
my success, my fame,
and my freedom?”

After Lady Gaga’s Sound of Music tribute last night at the Oscars, I thought the most appropriate song to play this morning was The Sound of Music. I played Climb Ev’ry Mountainlast time round, and there are no doubt more Sound of Music tunes to be played this year. For now, I hope you enjoy this!